Read: 1 John 4: 8-9
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

Reflect:

God is love, but does that mean that is the only or primary characteristic of God? According to William Yount, we may study the love of God “without mention of His holiness or wrath so that we can walk away with an unbalanced understanding that “God is love, therefore anything goes?” Hardly.

God is love, but God is also just. Look again at the words that follow “God is love.” Verse nine tells us that God expressed love through the Son who died for us.

If we are to understand God to the best of our ability, we need to be able to see the whole picture.  If we see only view God as Holy and Powerful, we may develop a distorted view of God as distant and angry. Or if God is viewed exclusively as all loving, our perspective can be skewed again.

Respond:

A.W. Tozer said that ““what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”

If you were to sit down and write a description of your image of God, would your view be an isolated extreme or do you see the whole picture?